Steam Summer Sale

Just as I'm promising myself to try and not buy any more new games so that I can whittle through my backlog, the steam Summer sale starts up and my wallet is about to take another beatdown.

The weird thing is, for someone who has owned Steam for a long time the sale season isn't really such a big deal anymore.  Sure, there will always be some games that I'd like to pick up on the cheap but I already own a lot of what's worth playing and at time of writing I've been feeling a little underwhelmed by the current sales.  Obviously something off my wishlist will crop up for an insanely low price but the phase of me buying everything ever because it costs about 80p is long gone, which is a little sad for me really.

Anyway, this year Steam have decided to roll out a little mini game that goes with the sale.  The Monster Summer Game is a clicker game where players work together to kill as many square looking monster things as they can within a day.  As people kill the monsters it unlocks sales on certain games so there is actually a pretty decent benefit to playing this thing.  Also as you play you can be granted up to 3 steam summer sale trading cards a day which is great if you're like me and just sell them off instantly.  Get some discounts on those already cheap games.

Granted a clicker game isn't going to blow anyone's minds but it's nice to see Steam trying to inject just a little bit more fun into their sale events.  It gives steam users something to look forward too ever sale other than just reduced prices on games.  If you have a few minutes to kill then it's worth just checking out but if you have a decent amount of free time you SHOULD be cracking through all those delicious cheap games you just bought.

Alien Shooter

Alien Shooter is a game that's been sat in my Steam library for fucking ages and I have no idea when I bought it or why.  It was a game released back in 2003 according to Steam and it was actually quite a pleasant surprise to fire this one up.

There really isn't much of a story to this game.  It's essentially aliens have attacked and are you a bad enough dude to shoot them all in the face with big guns?  There is text at the start of each level that tells you stuff about what's going on but I didn't give enough of a shit to read it, with a game like this I just want to shoot aliens.

That said, the game absolutely lives up to it's title as it will let you shoot a lot, and I mean A LOT of fucking aliens.  At the start of each level you are given a screen where you can purchase weapons, equipment and upgrades with the money you find in each stage and then after that you are just let loose.  The first few levels are a little on the slow and easy side but once things get going, they get going hard.  Your screen will be FILLED with enemies and keeping them at bay can be quite of a challenge.  Once all the aliens are dead you can proceed to the next stage to do it all again. 

While it sounds like something like that would get kind of boring kind of fast, the game is a little on the short side but for something like that I'm not going to dock it points for that since it ends before it starts to overstay its welcome.  My biggest problem with this game was the camera since none of the walls have any kind of transparency.  During one of the final levels of the game I had killed all but a few aliens, just a couple of stragglers left over.  For these aliens the AI had bugged out and they were walking into the walls but I couldn't see them because they were hidden in a corner.  Usually the game gives you a little arrow to combat this but there were enough stragglers left for the arrow not to appear so until I got lucky I was just aimlessly wandering around for a bit.

That said, Alien Shooter is actually pretty good and it was enjoyable enough to get me to start playing the sequel pretty much straight away.  It's a little expensive at £10.99 on Steam but it's the kind of game that gets 80% off in Steam sales so just wait for one of those and get ready for top down alien shooting fun.

Not Hyped For E3

E3 used to be such a wonderful time for me.  I'd get all excited for the upcoming press conferences and game play trailers.  Me and my buddies would try to make guesses at what all the big companies would be announcing and we'd talk about the titles that we would hope to see during the show.  However, that's all changed and now whenever anyone asks me about if I'm hyped for E3 or not, the only answer I can seem to muster is "meh"

The last couple of years have been a bit disappointing.  Last year I missed most of the pressers live due to work and then found myself not giving much of a shit when I fired up the recordings.  This year especially, I already know a lot of the upcoming stuff I'm interested in so the best I can hope for is an extra trailer or two.  I'm sure there will be some good games announced but I can't help but feel that some of the magic is gone from E3.

I'm hoping this year will go and prove me wrong and some of that E3 magic that I enjoyed so much a few years ago will return full force.  I'm hoping that almost every press conference will have something mind blowingly cool and I'll be able to come away from the stream with a big grin on my face like a child at Christmas.

It's not likely, but I'm sure as fuck going to get myself ready for the streams, cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Steam Refunds!

One of the big complaints about Steam from a long time back was that you can't get a refund for games that you have purchased.  This meant that if you were getting all experimental then you might end up stuck out of pocket with a shit game clogging up your library.  WELL NOT ANYMORE!

The policy on refunds seems rather simple, the request has to been made within two weeks of you purchasing the game and you have to have less than 2 hours play time clocked for the title on your steam account.  This seems fair to me and refunding titles has been a thing that console folks have been able to do since forever so it's nice to see PC finally getting the same treatment.

Of course, this has led to a number of people in the indie scene taking to twitter and moaning about how it's unfair.  Their main complaint is with the two hour time thing saying that now they are unable to profit from making shorter, artier type games.

Well guess what?  Fucking good, I'm glad you hacks can't peddle your arty farty non-game bullshit around Steam anymore.  There is nothing inherently wrong with an arty type game but I have never EVER seen one that is remotely any good.  If a developer does manage to make an arty type game that is good I promise you that people won't want to refund it, they'll keep it so they can support the creator in the hopes that maybe they'll make another one.

To be quite honest, if you're game is less than two hours long it probably shouldn't cost anything anyway.  When I play a game I expect there to be some substance to it, I don't want to be able to beat something in the time it takes me to commute to work.  If you are going to make something arty, now you have to be sure it either has some actual game play value to it or it's absolutely top fucking quality.

Well done Steam, you've done a good job here.  To all those indie developers whining about the two hour playtime thing, go fuck yourself and make something actually worth playing/keeping and then you won't be so bothered by a basic fucking consumer right, assholes.

Drunlike Results!

I'm recovering, more from the lack of sleep than the intake of booze, from the Drunklike marathon that went down last night.

I'd just like to take a moment to thank everyone who tuned in and all the people who donated during the marathon.  It was a fun event but I think it would be better if we set drinking rules for each individual game.  I didn't think that the time between runs would take so long so thanks to the slow pace of the drinking none of us really got all that drunk.  That said, a nice burst at the end thanks to some donators made Necrodancer particularly difficult.

Over the course of the event a total of £45 was raised towards the charity which isn't bad for a non-incentive surprise event.  Since it ended up being so much fun I'm hoping to do this again in the future but I'm going to tweak the format a bit to make our drunk antics a bit more interesting!

Stay tuned and please keep supporting the site, you guys are great!

Tau Plays Discworld Part 4

The uploads have been slow because I've been extremely busy!  Part 4 is kind of short but I hope you enjoy!

Did I become stupid?

So recently I've been working my way through my small collection of 3DS games.  The first one I pulled off my shelf was Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and I'm having a grand old time but holy shit does it make me feel stupid.

A lot of the stuff I'm doing in the game I'm doing from memory but I decided to stop and take my time and talk to some of the NPCs.  A lot of the time I can get what certain characters are hinting at but I can't help but feel like I have become considerably stupider when it comes to this kind of thing.  I have NO fucking idea how my child self, without the internet, figured some of the shit out in this game.  Granted I've not resorted to using GameFAQs yet for my current play through but I'm putting that more down to my memory than my smarts.

It's the same kind of thing with old action games on things like SNES and Mega Drive.  I die a lot more now than I remember doing back then and I can't seem to get as far as I used to.  Granted, I think it's because I'm out of practice but I just don't have the patience for multiple attempts at old games anymore.  As a kid my collection was a lot smaller and my backlog nonexistent so I guess I didn't mind sitting there and grinding runs in order to get good.  Now, when I start dying I just shut the thing off and play something else, my skill is being ruined by my vast choice of games.

I think there is an argument to be made that the internet does spoil a lot of gamers nowadays.  Way back then, when Internet access was extremely limited we couldn't just resort to a quick Google search for an answer and we had to play a bit smarter and be a bit more persistent in order to see those endings.  I also can't help but feel that modern gaming is a lot easier than it used to be.  We are constantly having our hand held by overly long tutorials and way point markers telling us where to go at all times and unfortunately a lot of people, including myself, become overly reliant on shit like that.

Doing a bit of retro gaming is good for you I think, gets those old gaming senses that you may have lost to brain dead current gen shit going and the end result of beating a game that doesn't hold your hand is super satisfying.  I think I'm going to force myself to be a bit more persistent with these older games and not just give up to go play something else.  Can't moan about current gen being too easy if I give up on the retro stuff too quickly for being too hard.